


play your new music, baby

by TooManyGaysTooLittleTime



Series: Daensa Week 2021 [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F, Flirting, Grief/Mourning, Music, POV Sansa Stark, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Unresolved Romantic Tension, not a songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29511108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime/pseuds/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime
Summary: Written forDay 3 of Daensa Week 2021 on Tumblr, prompt: Music, Art, & Poetry.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: Daensa Week 2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165004
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	play your new music, baby

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [New You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9SQl0cSfI8)[ by Zolita.](https://open.spotify.com/track/7o6lYqPzP2sPVYcyD6KAdg?si=LmuFARgaTa-JeSj5fzua7Q)
> 
> [Moodboard for this fic available on my Tumblr.](https://lesbiangrimalkin.tumblr.com/post/643399322416955392/p-l-a-y-y-o-u-r-n-e-w-m-u-s-i-c-b-a-b-y)

After the war, Sansa finally plays the high harp again. 

Her fingers glide over the strings, old and musted from years of being unused, cautiously at first, unsure whether the notes that she plays are correct. She tries to remember practising the high harp, tries to remember Cat’s fingers covering hers as she taught her how to play, but the memories are blurry in her mind, and Cat’s face has started to disappear as the time has moved on. 

Sansa does not want to forget Cat, or Ned, or Robb, or Lady. She wants to store the memories she has of them securely in her head for the rest of her life. And so, she tries to relearn the high harp, slides her fingers through the strings, thumbs them gently so that they do not snap from the tautness. Mayhaps the tuning is wrong, mayhaps she is forgetting the proper technique for the instrument, but Sansa does not know either of those things, so they do not matter.

As she practices more, and grows more confident, plucking at the strings with her eyes slipping closed and her ears attuned, she finds that she has forgotten, too, the words to the songs that she had used to sing. And when she tries to remember them, struggling with her eyes closed and trying to lose herself in the pool of memories, only a tuneful humming is left to her. 

She plucks at the strings again, and only sadness remains in the music. 

* * *

The Targaryen queen’s visits to the North are few and far between, and each one of them is a great event. At times Sansa worries that if she were to go North more often, their food supplies would be dying down, but each visit reminds her of the joy of the company of others. Daenerys understands her — she understands the burden of queenship in a way that neither Queen Jeyne nor Arya or Jeyne Poole do, and she knows that both of them need a place to rest sometimes. 

This visit, therefore, culminates with a quiet evening spent in Sansa’s chambers, where the high harp languishes in the corner, for Sansa has not relearned nearly enough of her old talent to feasibly perform for Queen Daenerys and her entourage. It is when night has almost completely blackened away all traces of the day, and the torches are flickering in their brackets, that Daenerys notices the high harp there and asks Sansa whether she will play it for her. 

Sansa is forced to admit to her lack of ability at the high harp. “I am sorry, my lady, but I do not have the talent to play the high harp to your standards.” Her eyes move guiltily away from Daenerys’s gaze. “Do not mistake that for unwillingness, for I should like to do it, very much so. It is only that I do not think it would please you.” 

“It will please me. I am sure of it,” Daenerys says. “Sansa, I wish to hear you play the high harp. You, and no other, for if I wanted quality, I should ask for a bard of some kind. Instead, I am asking for you to play, as it is your sweet music that I want to listen to.” 

“If that is your wish,” Sansa says, getting up from where she sits on a chair with Queen Daenerys to move to sit at the stool behind the high harp. She passes her fingers softly through the strings to warm them up, coaxing out mellow and nervous sounds. Looking up at Daenerys, she feels her spirit brighten at Daenerys’s encouraging smile, and closes her eyes to begin her first song, a mournful, sorrowing tune. 

In truth, she half expects Daenerys to wave an imperious hand to stop her and command her to play something more cheery, but to her surprise Daenerys does no such thing. Instead, queen remains perfectly silent for the duration of the song. 

After Sansa finishes, she opens her eyes, blinking as the light returns, and sees Daenerys clapping for her. “That was not untalented, nor did you lack ability.”

“I suppose I am simply judging by the others’ opinions on my playing.” Sansa says, wine flushing her cheeks to red, “for last time I played to the people of Winterfell, Arya told me that I was interrupting her listening into the boys’s sparring.” She laughs easily about it now, but it had been an issue when she had been only ten summers old, one that caused her to almost slap Arya across the face.

Daenerys gets up from her seat and walks to stand in front of where Sansa sits at the high harp. “Now you are a queen, and you still let others’s words get to you,” she says sadly. “The greatest tragedy in this world are women whose dreams have been stolen by menfolk for their own. But you and I, we have made those dreams of ours into a reality. We are different, Sansa. We are queens.” 

“So we are.” Sansa amends.

“I noticed that you had no words for your song,” Daenerys says suddenly. “And, as far as I am aware, every Westerosi song has words set to it. Why did you not sing?”

Sansa sets one hand against the body of the high harp. “I know not the words for the songs any more, my lady, for they have fled from my memory. It has been a long while since I have played at all.” 

“The words to all your Westerosi songs are all about the handsome kings and knights of old, are they not?” asks Daenerys. “And so it is not such a pity that you know the words not, for they are nothing more than the beliefs that Westeros has forced upon to you. Do you know, Sansa, that in Meereen they have songs for women who love their own kind?”

It takes her a moment to respond, for she is taken so aback by this revelation. “I did not, my lady. Neither did I know that women could love... their own kind, either.” 

“Of course they can, my sweet Sansa. The Westerosi are simply set in their strange ways, though, so I do not blame you for not knowing.” Daenerys comes to stand behind Sansa, placing her hands upon Sansa’s shoulders. It sends a thrill-rush through Sansa’s body, brilliant like a bright bolt of lightning arcing through the sky. “Now play, Sansa, and I shall sing for us — a better tune than any you have heard.”

“What shall you sing about?” Sansa twists her neck and gazes upwards to look into Daenerys’s eyes. 

“That is easy. I shall sing of two queens, and of the love between women. A tale more scintillating than any story of a king could be, and a love stronger than any man could give you, my Sansa.”

Sansa finds it increasingly difficult to concentrate upon the high harp before her, for a blush is rapidly blooming on her cheeks, and she cannot stop herself from thinking of Daenerys’s proclamations about the love between women. Above her, Dany’s lips are rose-pink, as if daring for Sansa to pluck a kiss from them — 

“Play a song for us, my Sansa.” Daenerys says, and Sansa does, plucking joy from the strings once again as she had done in her youth. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are heavily appreciated!!
> 
> also you can visit me on [tumblr](https://lesbiangrimalkin.tumblr.com/) if you want


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